Have you ever heard of Italian rock? Honestly, when I think about Italian music I think opera and Ennio Morricone, and I can’t even name a rock group, but here is the NUV, a 100% Italian band which sings in English and wants to make it big here. They have just released a second album baptized with the dangerous and provocative term ‘The Nuv Sucks (no, really)’, and this 11-track album is a serious hard-rocking ride. These guys – singer/guitarist Denis Tripodi, vocalist/guitarist Leonardo Sergun, bassist Dante Brin, and drummer Andrea Caristo – may wear their numerous influences on their sleeves but they know what they are talking about. I first thought about Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters, as most of their songs had this punchy and feisty rocking vein (‘Shit Guitar’), while quieter other ones (‘Lady Lovers’) had some Nirvana-esque sweet accents, then going all-breezy-ballad on you. But it is mostly aggressive rock, destined to bring you at the edge of your seat, like the dark beginning of ‘Monogold’, the song which could well be a Foo-Fighters-meets-Queens-of-the-Stone-Age in a ferocious battle. However NUV has other tricks like the destabilizing ‘What’s Your Feeling (for the fight)’, a more industrial dance floor which has, nevertheless, not traded any aggressiveness for dance-y beats. NUV blends roaring metallic guitars with poppy and lighter choruses, using some stop-and start effects just like QOTSA often does, and mixes synth and percussion danceable parts with hard rocking soundscapes, a bit like the Mexican band Kinky does, and on this one, it may have been the Latin flavor that came back to the surface.
‘Captain Fisting’ (one of my favorites) sounds like a bravado kraut-rocky track that the Strokes could have written when they were making, errr, rock music? ‘The Nuv Sucks (No, Really)’ is rich in catchy and very diverse tunes, ‘Senile Dementia’ even reaches real punk accents, and I thought that the last track ‘Failure Donkeys’ is even going a bit NIN during its heavy synth fuzziness alternating with melodic parts. But above everything, NUV wants you to move through their songs by rocking your head out.
They say to have been heavily-influenced by writer Anthony Burgess’ dystopian novel’ A Clockwork Orange’, as their first moniker was the New Ultra Violence, ‘a term used by Burgess to describe unprovoked, brutally violent acts committed for mere entertainment’, but I suppose they backed up a little bit with the alternative ‘New Ultraviolet Vanish’. Since, they have relocated for a while in Montreal, Quebec before returning to Europe to record and tour in support of their debut album ‘Top Model Super Fashion’. So are they the new Italian QOTSA/FooFighters? I don’t know but they are strong candidates, and the band even pushes the joke by posting on their Facebook page, photoshopped pictures of famous bands/musicians (Nirvana, Josh Homme) holding a sign reading ‘The Nuv Sucks (No, Really)’. This video for ‘Lucha Libre’, an older song featured on their previous album, shows them in action and gives us an idea about the spunk and energy they deploy during their live performances. I also feel an indestructible desire to succeed where no Italian man has triumphed before.
